A Cage of Blood and Flesh
by Mirthful-Malady
Summary: It was generally agreed that Bella Swan had always been a strange child. In which the cage that Lucifer was thrown into was not so much a cage as it was a person. Inspired by inukagome15's The Last Archangel series. Twilight-verse
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1. Of Dreams**

Sometimes, Bella dreams that she's flying.

Its not so much flying as soaring, flowing, being.

She's not so much a she in her dreams, but a being whose existence is so far beyond human that gender isn't even a consideration. She is vast, in her dreams, a being of light and power and unquenchable cosmic fire. As this being, this cosmic force made tangible, she glides through the depths of space, surrounded by billions upon billions of shining stars, watching as they form from glittering dust of Creation, and eventually collapse in on themselves a brilliant unfurling of light.

She drifts among the glowing gaseous orbs for what seems to be only minutes but also eons, and she is content.

She's usually alone in these dreams, a single consciousness surrounded by a glorious riot of celestial bodies and dust that she knows will one day form planets. But sometimes she hears singing, different from the musical notes of radiation emitted by the stars. It feels familiar, like the embrace of a loved one or the soft warmth of sun-soaked sand on her skin. It feels like family.

**A/N. re-posting chapters with slight edits. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2. Purpose**

There is one dream that makes Bella weep. She is in the void again, watching the birth of stars and reveling in the unfurling of vast wings. She is shining, a pulsing glorious light brighter than any of the stars, and her radiance reaches out to caress the other shining forms that she knows are her _sistersbrothersKIN._ Together there are seven of them, sharing this existence with each other. They are bright and quick and clever as she leads them on a graceful dance among the fiercely burning orbs, twirling around a binary system and engulfing the slowly forming moons of a languid gaseous planet in their vast glowing forms.

They are a Song.

They are a Song, and there is a Voice.

There is a Voice, it is a presence that permeates all, and even as she can feel it twining through her being down to the smallest particle of her existence, she feels no fear or panic at the all-encompassing might and terrible power.(so much greater than she can comprehend)

This being is bright and glorious and even as she feels how easily it could destroy her(erase her never was never would be) something inside her slots into place and it feels so very, very right.

This being is Truth, and Creation, and Father. Bella knows that she loves this being which brought her and her kin into being as much as she is capable of, the very core of her existence resonates with her love. This is what she was created for. This is what she is.

She is light and purpose and devotion for this being, and she knows that nothing else will ever truly matter. Because what else is there than this being? Her Creator who is and was and will be. What greater purpose could there be than to love and to worship the glory and the truth that is the Creator of all?


	3. Chapter 3

Bella has difficulty understanding the concept of 'mother' in relation to herself and Renee.

Renee, the teachers tell her, is her mother. Just as the man named Charlie who she hasn't seen in years is her 'father'. She understands the concept of both intellectually, but for her to have a mother seems so foreign to her. Wrong.

'Father' seems familiar. She can understand 'Father',the concept is real to her in a way that 'mother' is not.

The word 'Father' fills her with a heavy feeling, like dark stones pressing behind her eyes and a waterlogged rope wrapped tightly around her throat. It makes her want to weep and rage and burn until all that is left are the smoldering ashes of what once was and the tumultuous cry of her soul. She Loves Him though, so strongly that even the inexplicable feeling of betrayal cannot cause her to cease. She yearns for his presence even as she hates him.

She can't remember the face or the voice of the Father who inspires such emotions in her.


	4. Chapter 4

Bella is a child, small and soft and vulnerable, when she looks at the world and decides that she could do better. This, she knows, is not the best of all possible worlds.

This world as it is, she feels with a conviction from deep within some undefinable part of herself, is not how things are meant to be. Humans are corrupt and selfish and ultimately self-destructive. They squabble and tear at each other, fighting like feral dogs over land and oil and invisible boundaries which mean nothing in the end. There are pointless deaths and pointless suffering and it is UNACCEPTABLE.

There is no reason for them to fight. No reason for them to destroy a world that Bella knows holds potential to be so much grander than what they have reduced it to. She looks at the great glistening cities, built on lies and misery and pain, sticking out of the surface of the planet like the broken off shafts of poisoned arrows, and she feels the ghost of wounds in her own flesh. She sees children, thin and sickly, bones protruding from parchment-thin skin, and feels a great rage at the knowledge that all they know of such a glorious creation is filth and suffering. These beings, vast in number and buzzing in chaotic eddies of frustrated purpose like swarms of broken-winged flies, have squandered the gift that they have been given.

She sees and she weeps and she hates.

Oh, how she hates.

* * *

She is ten, young and pale with bones like dry twigs when she meets the woman whose eyes and hair gleam the sharp bright red of fresh-spilt blood.

It happens out near the desert, where Bella sometimes spreads herself across the cooling sand to watch the slow drift of stars and cosmic dust. It is quiet, but for the skittering of small animals in the sparse underbrush, and so Bella hears the soft tread of feet approaching her. She does not move from her sprawl, merely glancing in the direction of the interloper.

The woman is glorious, all sharp lines and lithe limbs. Her smile is like a knife sliding across Bella's young throat. She's beautiful, and Bella must have her.


	5. Chapter 5

First was the Void, an infinite canvas of darkness.

Into the Void came the first being, the Will, the Word, the Creator.

The Creator is grand, and vast, and powerful. But the Creator is the Creator and there are none who could claim to be equal. The Creator is alone but for the creations.

First among the creations are beings of vast power, whose intellect and potential are outsripped only by their hunger. The Creator had wanted equals. The Creator had not wanted to be alone.

The Creator had shaped beings into existence who were capable only of destruction, whose eternal hunger painted swaths of void across the whole of existence.

The Creator mourned what the First could have been, and created Seven beings of Light and Will and Purpose to drive the First into the cage the Creator had devised for them.

And thus were the Archangels created and the Leviathan confined to what would be called Purgatory.

[[[ Humans are filled with such Hunger, a greed that consumes like fire, growing and never satisfied. She was created to battle beings of great hunger, who devoured worlds and souls, and in humanity she sees their echo. ]]]


	6. Chapter 6

There is a power in words, in stories told by voices old and written letters. They are given form by thought and voice and hand, and they in turn shape thought and reality.

Stories, myths, fantastic tales of monsters and maidens, all such things hold within them a grain of truth. Or perhaps they create it.

There are many truths, some different than others.

There is a story to this world, Bella knows this, it thrums like a living thing in the space behind her sternum. She does not know what it is, not yet.

But this woman, this creature of marble flesh and blood-drenched eyes, is a part of it. She says her name is Victoria, and the blood in Bella's veins calls to the blood in her eyes.

Her voice is like the slide of a living snake across bare skin, sensual and dangerous.

She stands tall in the darkness, illuminated by only the soft light of stars and the waning moon, almost looming over the girl sprawled indolently in the sand.

There is a story in this moment, with two actors and one ending. A human girl, small and pale and weak, and a beautiful creature that reeks of death. That story ends quickly, with a splash of blood and light and the end of two beings.

But this is not that story. This is the story of a girl and a woman and the desert and the stars.


	7. Chapter 7

Victoria did not expect to find a child in the desert. She did not expect to find much of anything really, except for sand and solitude and the occasional migrant.

But there she is, sprawled bonelessly in the sand, staring at the sky. Her limbs are thin and pale, glowing like sun-bleached bone with reflected moon-light.

She smells like flowers and electricity.

Victoria stands there, watching in silence as the girl's chest rises and falls with soft steady breaths. She doesn't know why she refrains from ripping that bared fragile throat open then and there, but she can't seem to make herself move.

Fabric rustles gently, the sound soft even to her vampiric hearing.

"They're beautiful, aren't they?" The girl asks, her voice quiet, absent, and echoing strangely in the silence.

"...What?" Victoria isn't sure how to respond to this strange girl.

"The stars." The girl gestures vaguely skywards. "They're so bright out here. They seem so close. Almost like you could touch them."

She reaches her arm upwards, curls her fingers in a gentle caress.

"But you can't, not really," the girl continues musingly. "They're not even really there anymore. Not how we see them, anyway. Its just light now, falling into our eyes after travelling for so long through the void. Just light, and memory of something that was."

A/N. So. Hey there! I'm going to be posting this as a drabble fic from now on, with each chapter being 200-300 words. If anyone has any requests for specific events or situations that they would like to see, leave it in a review and I'll see about fitting it in. :)


	8. Chapter 8

It is quiet, always quiet, in the desert and inside Bella's head.

She knows that it shouldn't be that way, no matter what other people say. She isn't supposed to be alone inside her head. It isn't a good thing that she is.

She wants a background murmur, some comforting sound to keep back the ringing silence, and keeps expecting to wake up and hear the gentle susurrus of voices in the corners of her mind.

But every morning she wakes up, fighting her way through the embrace of sleep to find her mind just as silent, just as alone as before.

Music helps a little, like a band-aid slapped over a gaping wound. Classical music was...interesting, pop music amusing, rock music made her want to sneer, and heavy metal was strangely familiar. The screaming felt-not like home-but familiar in the way that a place you have lived for a very long time is familiar.

There's power in names, a peculiar truth to them that takes hold of reality and sometimes drags it sideways, just a bit.

A name given freely is different from a name taken, and so Bella looks upon this woman, pale and fey in the desert moonlight, and asks, "Do you have a name, oh wanderer of nights?"

The woman, this creature that reeks of blood and death and old pain, licks her lips, more out of habit than necessity, and whispers, "I am called Victoria."

There is something feral, frantic at the sharp edges of her smile.

Bella smiles back, tilts her head and laughs softly.

"Ah," she says, mostly to herself, "What a fitting name."

Victoria is still, posture somehow radiating uncertainty. The part of her that revels in the crunch of bone and warmth of gushing blood as a body stills its last frantic movements, the part of her more creature than not, wants to prostrate itself before this child-shaped being.


	9. Chapter 9

Bella is seventeen, still young and pale with fragile bones when she feels the story take hold. Renee, the sweet naive child that she is, has fallen in love with a man. His name is Phil. There is a story there, in the affection she can see between the woman and the man, the softness in their eyes. It is a small story, unimportant except for those involved, but there nonetheless.

Renee has fallen in love, and it is time for Bella to go elsewhere.

Elsewhere turns out to be in a small, insignificant town called Forks, with Charlie, the father who is father but also not. She remembers him, the warm presence from her early childhood with pale skin and dark, scratchy stubble.

He is a police officer, a protector with justice in his heart, and he loves her, albeit in his own awkward stilted way.

He is there when her plane lands, a splotch of dark blue against a sea of gray.

He greets her with a quick pat on her shoulder and a gift of a old red truck. It is serviceable, if not aesthetically pleasing. She cannot be bothered to ask for it's make or model.

It is useful in that in that it confers to her some level of freedom of movement, but some part of her cannot help but remember a voice, low and steady and rasping saying, _slow, and confining_.


	10. Chapter 10

**Double the length than usual!**

**This chapter is for reviewer Esmeraude11 who requested: the first time some fragment of Lucifer shows herself to Edward and the Cullens or even to the Quiluetes.**

**Many thanks to everyone else who reviewed as well :]**

Bella looks at the pale children with golden eyes who are arrayed around the cafeteria table like statues of long dead royalty, and thinks to herself, abominations.

She smiles, bright and sharp and a little too hungry, and makes her way towards their table.

The children, the human children, maintain a careful distance around their table. They are an island of cold still silence in the crowded room.

She sees the way that they play at being human, the careful, measured adjustment of limbs at random intervals, eyes that don't blink quite often enough, and the trays of food that sit in front of them. Every few minutes one of them will pick at their food, move it around and around in each of the little plastic squares.

The male with flaxen hair and soldier's posture slices away at the meat product on his tray in a way that manages to seem threatening. Bella thinks it's cute.

He is the first to react to her approach, his shoulders tensing ever so slightly and his eyes darkening to something like bronze. What would be confusion in a human translates into a familiar wariness in the pale creature's eyes. His movements still, into a tense preparedness.

The others, two males and two females watch her out of their periphery. They are inhumanly still, their postures uncomfortably stilted. It makes her want to twitch how obviously other these children are.

She honestly thought that they'd be better at being subtle, spending as much time around humans as they do. But perhaps they don't need to be, she thinks as she looks at the children milling around the room, obviously unaware of the creatures within their midst. People are really very good at explaining away what they don't understand, and barring that, ignoring it. Ignorance is bliss and all that.

Not really the best survival strategy, but considering the human population of Earth it seems to be working for them.

Bella nabs a chair from a nearby table, drags it to the one the creatures are sitting at, and drops herself down into it in a boneless sprawl. The boy with the unreasonably windswept coppery-brown hair stares at her as if torn between wanting to crack her skull open and inspect her brain and running far, far away. The others are also staring at her, mostly in a sort of wary confusion. Except the big one. He's gone sort of vague and there's a rather faint smile stretching across his pale lips.

She stares back, mostly at the squinty windswept one but she also manages to stare at the others in her periphery. She's got this. She's never once lost a staring contest that she can remember. This is, of course, a necessary step in asserting her dominance over these creatures and not at all a childish whim. She narrows her eyes and widens her smile past the point of public decency. Copper-brown flinches on the inside (not on the outside, his face remains passive, but Bella can tell anyway) and looks away. HA. Bella wins.

The others cast quick worried glances at their...comrade? coven-mate? Whatever it is that they call each other. She never bothered asking Victoria about things like that. She had better things to do with Victoria's time than ask silly questions. Fun things.

She leans forward, arms on the table, smirk on her face, and drawls, "Well. Isn't this adorable. What's a bunch of cute lil vamps like you doin' in a place like this? ".

A/N. As always if anyone has a particular request just leave it in a review and I'll get to it when it fits in the story


	11. Chapter 11

Carlisle was a child when the fear of God was beaten into him. Like most things that children learn, it stuck. The tales of fire, brimstone, terrifying angels and a vengeful God dug their roots deep and made his soul thrum with terror. He was marked with the sins of his forbears, he was told, it clung to him like a dark stain, condemning his soul. As was so for all humans, the weak, unworthy beings that they were in the face of such a mighty, perfect God.

He was a compassionate child, and grew to be a man as kind and merciful as his circumstances allowed. His sense of infinite compassion was tempered by his equally vast intelligence. There was a rot in the world, it took root in the hearts of men, twisting and corrupting them into monsters. They were a stain that must be removed for the sake of all, he was told. And so Carlisle became a hunter of things that moved in darkness, rooting out the stain to make the hearts of men just a little less dark.

While he never became as feared as his zealous father had been among the communities of hunter and hunted, he was much more successful. Where his father had followed whatever half-formed rumours of witches and demons that trickled through the sparse hunting networks, often killing innocent human civilians, Carlisle was capable of actual research. He had a knack for ferreting out the supernatural, the strange, the other. (and now he is one)

Its something instinctive inside of him that helped him recognize his prey. It helped him save countless lives, remove hundreds of threats(stains), and eventually lead to the end of his human life. And now, at this moment it is what allows him to see that this girl-child that stands before him is something entirely other.

Her name is Isabella(call me Bella) Swan.

She is short, and thin. Her skin is pale. Her hair is dark.

He can smell the warm iron of her blood, the faintly floral scent of her flesh, can hear the steady beat of her heart.

She is, for all appearances, entirely human.

Carlisle has never before felt such terror. It is like a living thing, sitting thick and heavy at the back of his throat, behind his eyes. It makes him think of his father's sermons, of sulphur and brimstone and righteous judgement. It has been centuries since he heard the sound of his father's voice. But here, in this moment, looking into the eyes of this girl-shaped being, he can almost hear his father's shouts as he preaches of holy judgement and vengeful angels.

She steps closer to him, tilts her head just slightly. Her hair(dark like blood soaked cloth) tumbles across her shoulder at the movement. Her eyes are bright(too bright), and sharp, like blades held to fragile flesh.

She smiles softly, dangerously. Her eyes hold his and he cannot name what he sees in them.

She reaches out a hand, pale and fragile, and straightens the collar of his lab coat. She pats his unmoving chest.

"Hello Doctor," She says, stepping closer.

"Its so nice to finally meet you. I've heard such things about you from your….children."

If he could still feel his heart it would be clenched with terror. What has this...being, done to his children? What is she going to do to him? Is this judgement?

She tilts her head from side to side, considering. "You should really remember to breathe, doctor. I hear it's important."

A strangled sound emerges from his throat.

Her lips twitch. "Your children have the same problem. You should really look into that. It'd be terrible if something happened to them."

She takes her hand away from his chest, turns aside. Smiles.

"Good day, Doctor. I do hope we meet again."

He watches as she walks away down the hospital hallway. Once she leaves his line of sight, the terror abates.

He stares blankly at the clipboard held in his frozen hand.

**A/N. So here's good old god-fearing Carlilse's reaction to our dear Bella! Next will be Emmet's POV of the last chapter. If anyone has other requests you know what to do. :]**


	12. Chapter 12

It is a thursday, cold and wet and grey like most days in Forks, when they meet her.

They'd heard about her of course; Bella Swan, the sheriff's daughter, come all the way from sunny Arizona. It was hard not to, in a place as small and bland as Forks the New Girl was big news. Prime fodder for high-school gossip.

The Cullens weren't particularly interested in those sorts of things, decades worth of experience having inured them to the excitement of schoolchildren. Time may pass, but humans don't change, not really, so they've seen this situation a hundred different times, in as many different places. An exchange student. It's almost cliche. Very little of such things are worth notice, after so many years of the same. But they were aware of her, if only in the periphery.

They had no real expectations, just another human, bland and ephemeral. Maybe a bit more tan than the humans that populate their sleepy little town, but nothing extraordinary.

But Bella, pale and warm and for all accounts human, manages to be something completely new.

She smells of thunderstorms, of ozone and barely contained electricity. He keeps waiting for the flicker of sparks to play across her skin, for the maelstrom he knows lies in wait beneath her bones and flesh to explode outwards and take them all with it.

But it doesn't, because for all intents and purposes Bella is human, soft and fragile and smelling of flowers and warm iron. And humans do not have storms beneath their skin.

…

The first time he sees her he can't help but feel warm inside.

He'd smelled her of course, they all had, but looking at her was as different as looking at the sun was from looking at shadows. They're in the cafeteria, halfheartedly pretending to eat what passed for food in american schools. They'd spent so much time pretending to be human that it was now nothing more than a necessary, if unpleasant chore. They weren't even trying very hard at the moment; anyone who bothered to really look could probably tell that something was wrong with the Cullens. But teenagers were easily distracted and not the most aware of individuals, so no one really paid their strangeness any mind.

Until Bella.

She strolls in through the cafeteria doors like an empress entering her court, and heads straight towards them.

Humans instinctively understand that to their kind, they are prey. They avoid the Cullens subconsciously, moving out of their way in the hallways or avoiding meeting their eyes for too long. They pass it off as being intimidated by their charisma, or respect for their social standing as 'popular' or whatever else makes sense to them, and ignore the shivers in their gut telling them otherwise.

But there is no fear in Bella's eyes, no subtle tensing as she recognizes superior predators. No, she approaches them directly, a faint smirk on her pale face as she sits herself at their table, and lounges comfortably like a large cat surveying its domain. There is nothing about her that would be prey.

He thinks of the bear that nearly killed him so many years ago, all muscle and fang and gleaming fur. He thinks of the iron taste of his own blood on his tongue and the feel of his own ravaged flesh, all gaping wounds and seeping red. He thinks of things that are, and were, and could have been.

Emmett looks at the expression on his brother's face, all confusion and frustration and the slightest hint of panic, and he smiles. This, he thinks with the giddiness of an adrenaline junkie, is something new.

He likes this girl. He likes her very much.

Edward, his dear perpetually moody brother does not seem to be of the same opinion. Fair enough, there really isn't much that he likes anyway. It might also have something to do with the way she stared Edward down. The way she managed to stare all of them down simultaneously, which should have been impossible considering the pairs of eyes involved.

Bella Swan, he thinks to himself, is impressive, and just a bit frightening. He thinks of Rosalie, his fiery mate, and then of Bella, and then of both of them, together. His mind is a terrifying place but he appreciates the image nonetheless. He has always had a thing for powerful, terrifying women.

And then she leans forward, and drawls with the slightest southern accent, "Well. Isn't this adorable. What's a bunch of cute lil vamps like you doin' in a place like this? ".

It is a thursday, and Emmett finally understands what it means to have religion.

**A/N. So here's Emmett's point of view of the Cullen children's first meeting with belcifer, as requested by Lucy's Echos. I might re-vist this scene later and do the other POVs. Next is Bella's thoughts on heaven, and the Cullens**.


	13. Chapter 13

It is silent inside Bella's head and something inside her wants to weep until her heart is only void. She is not meant to be alone, she knows this, but she is, and has been alone for so long she doesn't understand how it is to be anything else.

Jasper, the flaxen one with soldier's bearing, makes her think of younger siblings and wars and death. She has never experienced war, never felt the blood-soaked earth of a battle-field, or felt the sorrow that comes from watching a comrade fall. But she sees a soldier when she looks at the boy, she can feel the weight of battles fought and blood shed, and it is so familiar she wants to hold him close and say, "Brother."

He is an empath, she is aware, and every time they meet she knows he senses the strange camaraderie and guilt and longing that she feels when she looks at him. He'll never know what it means, not really, but she feels closer to him for it anyway.

She thinks he would be her favorite if he didn't cause such a thick feeling of guilt and regret to settle in her stomach.

Rosalie makes her think of little girls in bloodstained dresses.

She makes Bella think of women who want to be free; free from servitude, free from the pressing demands of powers and beings they cannot hope to resist. Rosalie is fire and defiance and desperate denial of the path dictated for her.

Rosalie is vengeance, and passion, and glorious drama.

The passing of a week since their first meeting finds the two of them in the large garage next to the Cullens' home. Bella has little interest in vehicles past their usefulness to her, but she enjoys watching the blond creature, pale and aggressively beautiful tinker with them while trying not to be unnerved by Bella's presence. They're not friends, Bella doesn't have friends, but the vampire is interesting and sometime in the course of the last week she's come to nebulously regard the creature as hers.

She likes to talk at the vampire, who at first seemed torn between attacking her or running away, but has now settled on a sort of wary, passive acknowledgement. After the first few days of being followed around by Bella the Blonde had apparently come to the conclusion that Bella would neither be deterred nor actively harm her. This is not an incorrect assumption, for the most part.

But being ignored gets boring after a while. Its also an irritatingly familiar sensation, like something that should have happened, but didn't.

Bella nudges tools off of the tool bench she's sitting on one by one, relishing the sharp discordant clangs they make on the cement as she stares fixedly at the side of Rosalie's head.

"I'm boooored," she whines, shifting side to side on the bench, displacing more tools.

Rosalie clenches her jaw and flicks the fringe of her hair out of her face.

Bella narrows her eyes at the vampire and demands imperiously, "Entertain me."

Rosalie, elbows deep in the engine of her newest acquisition, stills for a moment, considering. She tightens a nut on an engine part that Bella does not know the name of and tells Bella the story of how she died.

Its a good story. Full of blood and irony and righteous vengeance.

She especially liked the part with the wedding dress.

[Little girls in bloody dresses]

Bella smiles to herself and runs a finger lightly down her sternum.

Rosalie is not a good person. She is vain and violent and cares very little for the lives of people outside her family. Her first act after her rebirth was to systematically hunt down and kill the men who had wronged her. She snapped all the bones in their limbs before snapping their necks and their screams were fucking glorious. Her fiance lasted hours before she killed him. He begged for mercy, begged like the pathetic dog he was. She denied him that of course, just as he had ignored her own pleas. The crunch of his bones and the high, piercing screams that she wrung from his throat were the most beautiful sounds she had ever heard.

She remembers thinking, after she had stated her desire for vengeance and stood tall and beautiful in her white[too white] dress over the broken corpse of the man who destroyed her, that she had just meted out true justice. It left a heady taste in her throat.

Rosalie is not a good person. She knows that there is no place in heaven for her, she has tasted vengeance and gave herself to it. But she stands here now, arms deep in the engine of her latest project as she tells the girl-shaped being that calls herself Bella how she died. How she granted herself vengeance. And, she thinks to herself, she doesn't really care, because there is approval in Bella's oddly luminous eyes. That's somehow all the vindication that she needs.

What use does she have for heaven when there are so many glorious hells in the eyes of this being before her?

Esme is warm and kind and serene. Her womb is barren, her flesh is dead, her heart is still. The first time Bella meets her they are alone, and Esme smiles at her, soft and benevolent.

Esme does not have the body of a mother, but she has the soul of one.

Bella never quite knew what to do with mothers.

**A/N. I spent a long time trying to figure out how this chapter would go, and I'm still not quite pleased with how it came out. I'll revisit this idea in a later chapter, once Bella has regained more of her memories. **


	14. Chapter 14

[bella goes looking for a tree]

Forks is very green, Bella finds. Surprisingly green, in fact.

There are many trees. A whole forest-full, even.

They're even pretty, she supposes, as far as trees go. They are tall and thick, like the legs of some great ponderous beast. They are the same, for the most part. Bright and green and slowly growing.

But there is one tree that is very, very special. She thinks she knew why, at one point, but all she knows now is that she must find it. It hovers just beyond her consciousness, an itch at the back of her mind that demands to be tended to.

It calls to the gaping abyss within her, sings promises of light and relief and wholeness. She is drawn to it, not like a moth to flame, fragile and weak, but like a dragon is drawn to its hoard. (she wants it she needs it where is it whereisit)

It takes her two weeks of driving the old red truck(more rust than vehicle, now) through back roads into forests, and walking through mud and rain and rotting leaves on foot for her to find it.

/break/

There are and were and will be wolves in this forest. She sees the ghost of their pawprints, massive and deep in the thick soil. She can feel the puffs of their breath, whooshing from between pearly fangs, on the back of her neck. They circle her, more memory and idea than flesh, but she feels no ill intent from them as they follow her.

They are large, the size of the dire wolves that prowled these lands in times long forgotten and Bella briefly entertains the idea of riding one. They would look so terribly impressive in armour. But they are wraiths, the consistency of mist and dreams and she doubts they could bear her weight, let alone that of armour. Their eyes hold thought beyond that of mere animals,

She thinks on other wolves, who have circled the periphery of her dreams. She thinks of a mother, more idea than flesh, more force than thought, who crafted beings who too had paws and fur and fangs sharp and bright. She thinks of corpses with empty chests and cooling blood.

She bites her thumb until it bleeds and considers the taste of iron on her tongue.

/break/

The tree sits somewhere in the center of the forest, where the foliage is just thick enough for there to be proper shadows. The wolves(just shadows of memories now really) pace a wide circle around her tree, which sits in a small clearing. Bella does not know what type of tree it is. She is not a tree scientist, she knows nothing about trees past 'it has bark and leaves', it is not really important. This tree is hers and therefore the best type of tree.

The short grass that covers the floor of the clearing is covered in a thin coat of frost, the leaves of the trees that circle the clearing are tinted slightly with the colors of autumn. It is spring.

The tree is pale, coated entirely in thick frost, and when Bella lays eyes on it all she can think is, 'Ah, yes. There it is.'

The forest does not go silent. She can hear the faintest birdsong filtering through the forest, the rustle of small animals scurrying through the underbrush. There is a distinct lack of dramatic wind.

There is Bella, and there is her tree, sitting in the middle of a clearing, covered in unnatural frost. It is beautiful, her tree(of course it is, it's hers), and unique. She walks towards it, reaches out her hand until her fingertips almost tough the lightly frosted bark, closes her eyes, and takes a moment to lament how anticlimactic this moment is. She feels that there should be some sort of dramatic soundtrack to go along with whatever is about to happen. She can feel the anticipation in that space behind her breast-bone. She nearly tingles with it.

And so she takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent of frost and wet leaves and the barest hint of ozone. Then she touches her tree.

Lucifer opens her eyes, then blinks repeatedly.

"Huh."

**A/N. So. slightly shorter chapter, but belucifer now has her memories and grace back! I hope it met your expectations because I had absolutely none in regards to this chapter. As always I am taking suggestions and requests. I would love to know what kind of shenanigans you think that belucifer will be up to now that she is fully charged!**


	15. Chapter 15

Time is different for angels than it is for humans. They experience it in a way that is not entirely linear, in a single moment they see what is, what was, and what could be.

And so Lucifer, in the first fraction of a second that the being that was only Bella remembers and reclaims the Grace of her true self, comprehends the entirely of the truth of her existence in this world.

No matter what she has been called, Lucifer is not the Father of Lies. That title belongs to Loki, the not-pagan shell played by a little brother sometimes called Jibrail. Lucifer is the light that illuminates, the light that burns. She has no need for lies when truth has such power when wielded properly.

And the truth burns even its wielder.

Lucifer is alone.

There is no Heaven in this world, no glorious host, no legions of righteous warriors serving under archangels.

There is no hell, either.

No Cage.

No Knights, no Lilith.

No screaming legions of tortured souls and black-eyed demons.

Nothing.

Lucifer is alone, the only truth of this world's abrahamic religions.

She understands now, the silence that so haunted her during her time as only Bella.

Even her time in the Cage, so many thousands of years spent alone, locked behind seals formed from her Father's will, was not so quiet, so isolated. Even then she had heard the gentle murmurings of her brothers and sisters, the angelic host, and those who had fallen with her.

She was never alone, not really.

Not like she is now.

(she misses them, her brothers, the burn of their grace)


	16. Chapter 16

Lucifer doesn't know why, but the first thing she does after regaining eons of memories and the rest of her Grace(realizing how alone she is), is seek out Victoria.

Victoria, who is just finishing her meal.

She's in an apartment that looks out over the ocean, calm and placid underneath a cerulean sky. Her meal(young, female, dark hair), is splayed underneath the red-head on the king-sized bed, naked. The girl's skin (she can't be more than sixteen) is waxy and pale, and her pulse is soft and light, like the flutter of moth wings.

Lucifer(bella) watches, silent and incorporeal, as Victoria slowly drains the girl's life from a wound on her throat. A few drops escape Victoria's lips where they are sealed over the wound, languidly tracing a path down the long pale throat before joining a red stain on the otherwise pristine white sheets.

Someone else might have called the scene hauntingly beautiful, or elegant. But Lucifer has seen beauty and seen death(as well as Death), and has never considered the two as capable of existing together. All she sees is something being taken, something being given. A life, ending. Another, continuing.

Just things happening, the way they always have.

The girl's pulse slows, slows, slows, until there is only the sound of Victoria's tongue laving at congealing blood and cooling flesh. The vampire licks away the rest of the blood, leans back and considers the corpse with a scarlet gaze.

Lucifer considers Victoria, silently.

Then she reveals herself to the vampire, manifesting too quickly for even vampiric senses to anticipate.

Victoria, ever vigilant, ever wary, reacts and has Lucifer by the throat before she even realizes who it is.

Her fingers clench ineffectually against Lucifer's throat. Her brow furrows in confusion, then recognition.

"...Bella…?"

There is wariness in her voice, as if she isn't quite sure. The corner of Lucifer's lips twitch into a smirk.

"Hello Victoria. Miss me?"

/brreak/

Victoria knew that there was something different about Bella since she met her in the desert that night. There had always been something...more, something deeper, to Bella than could be explained.

No matter how human Bella seemed, the creature part of Victoria never wavered in its certainty that the milk-skinned rag-doll of a girl was the most dangerous being she would ever meet.

Every moment in Bella's presence, no matter how benign she seemed, was an exercise in mingled fear and excitement. Sometimes, Victoria fancied that if she were to worship any being, exalt them above all else and lay sacrifices at their feet, it would be Bella.

But here, in this moment, looking at the being in front of her that she only knows as Bella, Victoria begins to understand that she may never comprehend her power. For the girl-shaped being in front of her is as different from the first Bella Victoria met as a vampire is from a human. Bella simply thrums with energy, like trapped lightning, or a star. And she's real, so real, nothing like a dream. She so real, in fact that all else seems false in comparison. She stands there, casually and assured with Victoria's cold fingers wrapped around her throat, and she is the axis mundi in that particular moment of existence.

And then Bella speaks to her, greets her, and every word is a caress more delicious than the taste of human blood.


End file.
